Thursday, August 2, 2012

Wool swim trunks?

I created some swim trunks for the "Look Ma No Sleeves" garment challenge that Handwoven sponsored last Spring. I started late which was the inspiration for a small garment, and I used weave-it looms to make squares that I could travel with rather than try to get yardage woven on a floor loom in the allotted time. They also had a category for using knitting yarns, and I thought that would be just perfect.

Unfortunately, as creative as I thought I was being in not submitting another vest, the judges did not construe swim trunks as a sleeveless garment, so I did not get selected as an entrant. Fortunately, they were enamored with the trunks enough to publish them in Handwoven anyway because of their creative construction.

So here is a little more information on those wool swim trunks. And no, I haven't actually gone swimming with them yet, but I hope to soon! They are superwash, so they shouldn't full and shrink on me, right?

The yarn was Fiesta Yarn's Boomerang superwash wool sock yarn that I had 3 skeins of hiding in my knitting yarn stash.

Here I was trying to play with the layout of the squares to maximize coverage and figure out just how many squares I was going to have to weave. Three to five squares per night, weave the bands on the weekends, I might just be able to do this!

A big shout out to Dale Pessin. Without her help I never would have gotten this thing sewn together. I bought a sewing pattern for boxer shorts figuring I could just use that and ignore the opening that usually accompanies boxer shorts. She was so helpful in sizing the pattern to fit me. That led to one or two embarrassing moments however as her husband Bud caught me running around their basement in my underwear. Good thing we're good friends!

After the squares were sewn together, I ironed fusable interfacing to the wrongside so the squares wouldn't unweave as soon as we cut them. Dale was very helpful here as well pinning and ironing seams as I feverishly sewed. We then began to realize just how short these trunks were going to be. Not my original intention.

Each panel was one leg and required 12 6x6" squares and 10 4x4". So that was a total of 24 6x6 and 20 4x4 for the entire thing. If I had had time I would have added another row of the 4x4 to the bottom to give the trunks some much needed length.

The waistband had to be hollow in order to run a cord through so I could have an adjustable waist band. And as heavy as these trunks were going to be wet, I wanted to make absolutely certain they stayed on in the water!

By putting the cards on their points you get two sheds and can weave two inkle bands joined at the selvedges. Just make sure not to cross the threads or the two bands will be joined forever.

We had a lot of fun having various family members try on the shorts to see who was going to be my model for the pictures I had to send to Handwoven for the competition. My niece said she would try them on if her brother would thinking that that was a safe bet because I wasn't going to be able to talk him into it.

Well, she lost that bet, but we decided my nephew's chicken legs and lack of butt (much like myself) were not very flattering. So this picture didn't make the cut.

Her's was so cute that she got the honor of representing the trunks at Handwoven. (Shhh, don't tell anyone, but you can see I only had the band sewn onto one leg at this point.)

The trunks were a complete success! Everyone who sees them smiles and chuckles. The perfect response to something as whimsical as wool swim trunks.